In the privileged way that people who don't actually have cancer have it on their minds. In the arm's-length way of someone who's never lost a child or a spouse or a parent to it. From a comfortable distance, I suppose.

I learned a few days ago that one of my college housemates is struggling to overcome the cancer she's battled for years. We became pals almost 20 years ago and have stayed only loosely in touch, so I can't pretend to know the heartache her loved ones are carrying with them as they help her get healthy and stay alive for her two kids.

But I think, constantly, about her and those gorgeous children and that husband, the one who loves her with such joy and certainty that everyone in their presence feels it.

I'm angry on her behalf and heartbroken for her kids and all-around stunned at the injustice of it all.

I carried all those feelings with me as I watched Stuart Scott's speech today — the one he gave last night while accepting an ESPY (Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly) award from ESPN, the network where he's an anchor.

Stuart, 48, was diagnosed with cancer in 2007. He's taken the battle public — talking about it on air, allowing cameras to record his doctor's appointments, speaking freely in interviews about his victories and setbacks and fears.

He is, by anyone's measure, an inspiration. I so badly want him to pop up one day and announce that he's cancer-free. That, look, doctors do make this awful disease go away. That everything does turn out fine in the end.

I want him to win. I want my college friend to win.

"I never ask what stage I'm in," Scott told The New York Times in March. "I haven't wanted to know. … Stage 1, 2 or 8, it doesn't matter. I'm trying to fight it the best I can."

"When you die," he continued, "that does not mean you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live and in the manner in which you live. So live. Live. Fight like hell and when you get too tired to fight then lay down and rest and let somebody else fight for you."

It's such a beautiful tweak on the way we talk about cancer. He lost his battle … She wasn't able to overcome …

It shifts the power away from the disease and back to humanity.

It takes away none of the pain and makes the prospect of living without your beloved no less unbearable. It's only language, after all.

But it's a reminder that victory dwells in our children and our friends and all the ways we shape our tiny corners of the Earth, no matter how many days we get to spend on it.

One might get the impression — what with 61-year-old Jeff Goldblum proposing to his 31-year-old girlfriend and an Esquire writer in his mid-50s deigning to admit 42-year-old women are attractive and the hugely popular "Modern Family" centering around patriarch Jay (Ed O'Neill, 68) and his wife...